Hacker Culture

by Douglas Thomas, 2002
Thomas goal in writing this publication is break the myths that the general public has regarding hackers. The hacker culture tries to find the middle ground between those who hate hackers and those who glorify them as heroes. The book basically tries to explain who hackers are and where their origins lie.
Thomas comes from the Southern California Annenberg School for Communication as an expert in the hacker world. The focus of is work is to investigate the history of hacking and its perception in mainstream society, inner circles, and Hollywood. He often cites the movie “Hackers” (1995) and its influence on the hacker culture. This movie inspired and glorified a generation of hackers and pushed them to the forefront of the media.
Thomas’ book tries to break the myth of hackers as being evil criminals whose sole purpose is to steal from the greater population. In fact, he offers that the majority of computer hackers actually just want to help test out computer systems for their security errors and not to steal information.

The public’s view of hackers as criminals is more a reflection of their insecurities of the information age then what hackers really do. Thomas argues that in the early days of hacking the majority of the “hacking criminals” where in fact middle class suburban white teenage boys who were acting out as teenagers do. These hackers believed in free software and delved into the computer systems of the time.
Hackers can be a variety of things both harmful and helpful. Without hackers, the computer industry would go untested and possibly insecure in the information age. If it weren’t for hackers, Microsoft would not have to constantly upgrade their security measures for the most widely used personal computing applications. However, in a small number of cases, hackers can also reek havoc on large business corporations and devastate banking and security companies. These attacks put the public in fear when crimes such as identity theft are increasingly rapidly. Thomas does a good job of riding the fence and explaining the two sides of hacking. In addition, he tries to break the mainstream society myths through a series of hacking examples. The book is written by an academic and is a bit slow on time when he describes the theories. However, he also thoroughly describes many of the historically important hacking events and their impact on our modern information culture.